The present invention relates to cocking devices for weapons and firearms.
Historically, the field of cocking devices has been prolifically dominated by cocking devices which have been routinely and nominally designed and economically manufactured for performing a mainly unifunctional purpose in weapons and firearms. However such cocking devices have been found to be undersized, encumbering and only nominally effective as cocking devices on submachine guns, semiautomatic carbines and other types of weapons and firearms which require a cocking device for gripping with the hand and/or fingers in order to cock the weapon.
More specifically, prior art weapons, particularly submachine guns (SMG), semiautomatic carbines and other types of firearms, have been equipped with small, encumbering cocking knobs or small bolt handles to facilitate the accomplishment of cocking. These weapons normally require cocking with each new clip, thereby normally demanding that the shooter re-cock the weapon with the small, encumbering, existing cocking knob each time before a round can be fired.
The existing aforesaid types of weapons and firearms provide the standard cocking knobs, cocking bolts and cocking handles heretofore described which have been small and cumbersome to handle. Further, these cocking devices demand excessive and awkward use of physical strength to force the knob, bolt or handle back the required distance to accomplish cocking. The effort demanded in cocking actions often reaches or exceeds a 20-pound pull. This effort, combined with the small and encumbering cocking devices of minimal facilitating features has resulted in the cocking of the aforesaid weapons being difficult and sometimes painful, injurious or impossible for many persons of lesser physical capabilities, such as wounded persons, many women, the elderly, the handicapped, and those hampered by severe weather and environmental conditions and/or by cramped spaces or encumbering clothing and gloves.
These prior art cocking devices have basically been devised by the military for military uses and/or by private individuals and/or by manufacturers for fabrication at modified expense and often minimal manufacturing requirements in types of weaponry and firearms. This has resulted in facilitating minimal features in the design of the cocking devices in order to accommodate and compliment the design of the firearms. The known prior art weapons and firearms which utilize cocking devices have been constructed without taking into adequate consideration the real-life requirements and facilities of the experienced users' actual situations and circumstances demanding innovative, precise, fast and practical needs for such a device in the action of cocking.
The existing standard devices provided for cocking are awkward, undersized, and encumbering cocking knobs, cocking bolts and cocking handles. They normally accommodate the use of but one or two fingers, or sometimes a finger and a thumb, or the lower palm of the hand. These devices are barely adequate in meeting professional, practical and experienced users' needs. Some prior art devices for cocking of weapons have been found to have awkward, undersized and encumbering cocking devices facilitating disproportionate features designed in such a means and manner as to pinch the side of the finger or the lower palm of the hand if one is not alert and cautious in the action of cocking the weapon. Others dig into the hand or fingers as the result of the strength, force and pressure one must apply against the cocking device. The results have been and are quite uncomfortable and distracting in the cocking of the weapon by such minimally-featured devices. None of the aforedescribed difficulties and encumbrances are needed or desirable in the conditions of battle. Further, they can result in being distracting to the degree that the user's attention is drawn from the enemy, thereby exposing the user to injury or death at the hands of the enemy due to these distracting, encumbering, minimally featured, and undersized devices. None of the aforedescribed difficulties are desirable, nor have they been cognizably discovered by individual shooters using these types of cocking devices on weapons used for sport where repeated cocking is required. And while an increasing number of women today are interested in shooting, many find they cannot cock a number of the firearms on the market today.
One known prior art cocking knob mounted on the top of a weapon includes a sharp-edged, V-shaped slot in its upper surface. This cocking knob can result in physical discomfort and sometimes pain and injury to the hand and/or fingers of user when required to force the cocking knob back against a counter force of one or more compressed, tensioned springs of the firearms' heavy-bolted firing mechanism in order to cock the weapon.
Additionally, heretofore there has been no known prior art providing a design for a significant correction of and reduction in the difficulty of the action of cocking. Nor does the prior art describe a device or devices for cocking, target framing, range finding, and further usable as a carrying handle, hanging device and stand in a singled-piece multiple-purposed device. U.S. Pat. No. 710,659 to Bennett, et.al., issued Oct. 7, 1902, describes a sight featured as a rear-sight slot within a finger-piece or thumb-piece handle cocking device for cocking a semiautomatic weapon. This device moves back and forth as the weapon is fired and as such constitutes a moving cocking device and sight, thus comprising a nonstationary feature in the cocking device. This device is a short, one-finger-activated or thumb-activated device protruding flat, straight upright on its rear portion and concave on its forward portion for finger or thumb gripping.
In the research of prior art pertaining to and inclusive of existing cocking devices such as knobs, handles, levers and bolts, having means of compressed, spring-tensioned and heavy bolts embodied as mechanisms to actuate preparation for firing in numerous weaponry, users, in applying strength of the arm, hand and/or fingers against the provided device in cocking such weapons against resistive springs and heavy bolts, have been found to question, in their action of cocking, whether a round had in fact entered the chamber. Primarily, because the encumbering, undersized cocking devices are forced against the related resistive springs and heavy bolts or breech blocks in cocking weapons, the user has been found to have been uncertain as to whether or not the cocking had been accomplished, and further whether or not the action had brought the spring and bolt system far enough back to engage and inject a round into the chamber ready for firing.
Further, no known devices are constructed to provide an all-inclusive, all-in-one, cocking device, target-framing device, range-finding device, carrying device, hanging device and standing device.